Bill Pronzini - Bones

“Drunk and disorderly, what else? You a bill collector?”

“No.”

“Process server?”

“No. He does still live here?”

“Yeah, he lives here. But he won't much longer if he don't start payin his rent on time. He's just like my ex-a deadbeat and a bum. This was my house, I'd throw him out on the fuckin street.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Right out on the fuckin street,” she said.

“What's his room number?”

“Six. Upstairs.”

“He in now?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? If he ain't you can probly find him at Mama Luz's, over on Main. That's where he does his drinkin when he don't do it here.”

“Thanks.”

“Don't mention it. You a friend of his?”

“Religious advisor.”

“What?”

“His religious advisor. I'm teaching him how to love his neighbor. Maybe you'd like a few lessons too.”

“Fuckin wise guy,” she said, and shut the door in my face.

I went upstairs, found the door with the numeral 6 on it, and whacked it a couple of times with the heel of my hand. Nobody answered. On impulse I tried the knob: Dancer had forgotten to lock it, or just hadn't bothered. I poked my head inside. Just a room, not much in the way of furnishings; clothing strewn around, an empty half-gallon jug of Lucky Stores generic bourbon, a scatter of secondhand paperbacks that had probably come out of the thrift store nearby. I didn't see any sign of a typewriter or a manuscript or anything else that a professional writer ought to have lying around.

I shut the door and went back downstairs and out into the warm sunshine. It was a nice day down here, cloudless, with not much wind; the Peninsula is usually ten to twenty degrees warmer than San Francisco and this day was no exception. I left my car where it was and hoofed it along Stambaugh to Main Street. Mama Luz's wasn't hard to find. It was half a block to the west, and its full name, spelled out on a garish neon sign, was Mama Luz's Pink Flamingo Tavern. Some moniker for a sleazy neighborhood bar. I crossed the street, shook my head at the scrawny pink flamingo painted on the front wall, and went through an honest-to-God set of batwing doors.

The interior wasn't any better than the exterior. The usual bar arrangement, some warping wooden booths, a snooker table with a drop light over it, and a mangled jukebox that looked as if it had been mugged: broken glass top, caved-in side, and a big hole punched or kicked in its midsection. I would not have liked to meet the guy who had done all that damage, even if he'd been justified.

There were four people in the place, including an enormous female bartender. Two of the customers were blue-collar types nursing beers; the third was Dancer, down at the far end, draped over a newspaper with a cigarette hanging out of his face and a glass of something that was probably bourbon close at hand. He was reading with his nose about ten inches from the newsprint, squinting through the cigarette smoke as if he might have gone myopic; he was the type who would go on denying that he needed glasses right up to the day he went blind. He didn't notice me at first, as engrossed as he was, so I had a chance to take stock of him a little.

He had changed in the two years since I'd last seen him, and none of it for the better. He was about sixty-five now and looked every year of it: sagging jowls, heavy lines and wrinkles and age spots on his face and neck, a lot more ruptured blood vessels in his cheeks, and a rum-blossom nose W.C. Fields would have admired. There wasn't much left of his dust-colored hair; age spots littered his naked scalp as well. He looked dissipated and rheumy and too thin for his big frame, as if the flesh were hanging on his bones like a scarecrow's tattered clothing. The thought came to me that he was going to die pretty soon, and it gave me a sharp twinge of pity and compassion. He'd screwed up his own life-we all do to one extent or another-but he hadn't had many breaks, either, and very little luck. At sixty-five he deserved better than a furnished room near a thrift shop, a stool in Mama Luz's Pink Flamingo Tavern, and death staring at him from the bottom of a whiskey glass.

“Hello, Russ,” I said.

His head came up and he peered at me blankly for a couple of seconds. Then recognition animated his features, split his mouth into a bleary grin, and he said, “Well, if it isn't the dago shamus! What you doing here?”

“Looking for you.”

“Yeah? Christ, it's been what, two years?” He stood up, more or less steadily-he'd had a few but he wasn't drunk-and punched my arm. He seemed genuinely glad to see me. “You lost some weight, paisano. Looking good.”

“So are you,” I lied.

“Bullshit. Listen, sit down, sit down, have a drink. You've got time for a drink, haven't you?”

“Sure. If you've got time to talk.”

“Anything for you, pal, after what you did for me. Hey, Mama Luz! Drag your fat ass down here and meet an old friend of mine.”

The enormous female behind the bar waddled our way. She was Mexican; she must have weighed at least three hundred pounds, all of it encased in a tentlike muumuu thing emblazoned with pink flamingos; and she wore so much powder and rouge and makeup that she resembled a mime. She might have been one, too: she didn't say a word, even when Dancer told her who I was. All she did was nod and stand there waiting.

“So what'll you have?” Dancer asked me. “You still just a beer man?”

“Always. Miller Lite, I guess.”

“Miller Lite, Mama. Cold one, huh? Give me another jolt too.” She went away to get the drinks and Dancer said, “So how'd you track me down?”

“Card you sent me last Christmas.”

“Social call or you working?”

“Working. You might be able to help.”

“Me? How so?”

“The job has to do with a pulp writer named Harmon Crane. Cybil Wade told me you might have known him.”

A corner of his mouth twitched. “Little Sweeteyes,” he said. He was talking about Cybil, not Crane. “How is she?”

“Fine.”

“And that son of a bitch she's married to? Tell me he dropped dead of a coronary, make my day.”

“No such luck.”

“He'll outlive us all-like Nixon. You still seeing her daughter?”

“We're engaged, more or less.”

“Good for you. Tell Sweeteyes I said hello, next time you talk to her. Hell, give her my love.” He grinned lopsidedly and drained what was left in his glass. Still carrying the torch, I thought. He'd carry it right into the grave with him.

“About Harmon Crane, Russ. Did you know him?”

“Old Harmie-sure, I knew him. Met him at a writers' lunch the first time I came out here from New York. I'd read his stuff, he'd read mine. We hit it off.”

“That was early 1949?”

“Spring, I think. I hadn't made up my mind to move to California yet, but I figured I would if I could find a place I liked. Tried L.A. first; forget it. So I came up to Frisco.”

“You get to know Crane well?”

“We palled around a little, got drunk together a couple of times. Even tried collaborating on a pulp story, but that didn't work out. Too much ego on both sides; believe it or not, I had one back then.”

“You had reason. You know what I think of Rex Hannigan.”

“Yeah. But Hannigan was a second-rate pulp private eye compared to Johnny Axe. You remember the Axe series?”

“I remember.”

Dancer chuckled, as if something funny had just tickled his memory. “Harmie had a hell of a sense of humor. Always good for a laugh. Last book he wrote, Axe gets framed for a murder of a guy that owns a soup company, see, so Harmie called it Axe-Tailed Soup. Perfect title, right? But his editor wouldn't let him use it. Too suggestive, she said; some blue-nose out in the Bible Belt might read a dirty double meaning into it and raise a stink. The editor, this shriveled-up old maid named Bangs, Christ you should have seen her, this Bangs broad wants him to come up with another title quick because the production department and the art department are all set to move. So Harmie waits a couple of days and then sends the new title by collect wire, no comment or anything, just one line. What do you think it was?”